


Ruiner

by Kiyaar



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Suicide, hickmanvengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-11-17 22:43:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11278296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiyaar/pseuds/Kiyaar
Summary: Hickmanvengers-divergent. After "I'm gonna beat you bloody," before Steve is old. Ignores Superior Tony.





	Ruiner

 

Tony goes to a meeting, sits for fifteen minutes, and then walks out the church doors and down the stairs and two blocks down the road and into a liquor store. 

Everyone saw his face. 

He doesn’t remember how this felt the first time. _You had an accident_ , he remembers Pepper saying with a sad smile, like it was happenstance and not a suicide attempt. An accident, equivalent to anyone else’s lapses. _A struggle with mental health_ , they would have said, when he was famous but no one knew who he was yet, when he just had the one layer: Tony Stark, flesh and blood, and some metal in his chest. 

He doesn’t remember what that feels like, but he remembers that people don’t accommodate Iron Man. Never have. They’ll always crucify Iron Man. 

He doesn’t remember, so he gets to learn what this feels like, again, firsthand.

He doesn’t fall off the wagon so much as he leapfrogs over the carriage seat and lies in the road waiting for it to run him over. He is so sick after an hour that he is forced to crawl a few meters over, finds another plot to retch onto. Doesn’t ask forgiveness this time. He doesn’t like the taste. He never liked the taste. He pretended to like scotch because his father liked scotch and Tony knows how to build a brand. He pretended to not care because no one else was bleeding all over their damn sleeves. He pretended not to care because he has had to learn, secondhand, from news articles, just how precious Steve’s trust in him is. 

He’s learning it all over again, swish, swallow, spit, vomit. Repeat.

There are four thousand people he could call, he could light up every ring of that Avengers map Steve made with him, every contingency plan, every backup plan, he could bring them all down on him right here, and he wouldn’t feel a thing for it. 

The only person who can punish him is lying in the ground.

He will never stand in front of Steve as Iron Man and get to explain. He will never stand in front of anyone, as Iron Man. He will never get to hear Steve call him _Tony_ again. He is a hypocrite. Did he give Steve the idea? Did Tony erase his brain because it was too much? He would like to think he’s stronger than that. _Resilient._ He laughs and he coughs and it turns into hacking, turns into his body turning up what he threw down. Tony is vain, and arrogant. It doesn’t matter why Tony did it, the logic is sound and the ethics are cloudy and the responsibility is all his. 

Who knew? Steve had a tipping point when it came to betrayal. Steve had a _tipping point_. 

He doesn’t remember what Steve’s body looked like the first time, just the pictures of him laid out on these white marble steps, the blood curing in shining pools. 

This time, it looked like any pedestrian suicide in Brooklyn – vet, late 30’s, lived alone, one shot heard. Barefoot. No evidence of foul play, and for once they were right. Hush-hush for days, until a cover story could be whipped up. No one gets to know why Captain America decided he wasn’t going to fight anymore. 

Who knew, the news channels say. Who knew. 

Tony knew. 

He wants to burn, he wants to fall down dead where he stands. He teems with it, imagines his blood vessels bursting one by one from the sheer injustice of it. He wants to rip his own face off, _do it_ , and his brain is running it for him, scrolling it out like a marquee: ruiner, garbage, Steve put a gun in his mouth and he did it because you said you loved him, you said you loved him and you did this to him, liar, trash, he trusted you, you ungrateful filth, you did this you did this you did this _you told him you loved him –_

**Author's Note:**

> I am [kiyaar](kiyaar.tumblr.com) on tumblr! and this is a [rebloggable post](http://kiyaar.tumblr.com/post/115111459533/kind-of-scared-to-ask-this-because-youre-going-to) from 2015 that I dug up!


End file.
